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Wil S. Hylton

Osama bin Laden is dead, but the wars he provoked rage on, claiming lives in all kinds of ways. Consider the bizarre case of Phil McDowell, a decorated American soldier who completed his four-year tour of duty but now may be deported from Canada and court-martialed as a deserter. How can you go AWOL when you're not even in the army anymore? On the eve of our first Memorial Day since we killed the guy Phil enlisted to fight, Wil S. Hylton investigates

Attorney General Eric Holder entered the Justice Department on a mission to reinvent it. He'd rectify the dubious hires of the Bush era; he'd shut down Guantánamo and try the most notorious detainees here on U.S. soil; he'd speak forcefully and often about the return of the rule of law. Unfortunately, Washington doesn't like an idealist

Next month, irate California voters will go the polls to decide if their next leader should be the same starry-eyed, hot-tempered Zen Buddhist who pulled the state back from the abyss three decades ago. A candid GQ+A with Jerry Brown

In the year since we elected our new decider in chief, a lot of things in Washington have changed. Pelosi and Reid are trying to wield their majorities, Tom DeLay is on Dancing with the Stars, and Rahm took over the world. A whole new power structure has emerged. So in order to navigate it, we polled journalists, congressmen, lobbyists, think tankers, and influence peddlers and came up with our biennial list of the men and women who truly have clout—in a city where a lot of people think they do

*And to eliminate the obvious, all people with the last name Obama or Biden have been stricken from this list

Last summer, the state of Nebraska made it legal to abandon a child. Then the children started flooding in—eleven a day at one point, from all over the country. So are there more bad parents, or more monstrous kids, than anyone knew? Or is it more complicated than that?